1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to communications and, more specifically, to video conferencing.
2. Description of the Related Art
People may communicate vocally through various devices including telephones, cellular phones, and Internet phones. People may also communicate with each other through audio and video connections. For example, in a video conference, cameras and microphones located at local and remote sites may capture video and audio of conference participants to transmit to the other respective site. In addition, each video conference site may include a display and a speaker for reproducing the received video and audio signals.
Current prior art video conferencing systems generally suffer from poor resolution and poor display capabilities. Current video conferencing systems may employ TV quality resolutions such as 704×576 or 704×480. Some specialized custom systems deliver higher HD resolutions up to 1920×1080 however they use 10-15 Megabits per second (Mbps) which makes them impractical due to the difficulty and prohibitive cost of the connection bandwidth. One problem with current prior art conferencing systems is generally the lack of realism, primarily due to lack of display quality and picture resolution.
Recently, high definition video displays (e.g., HDTV displays) have been introduced, offering higher resolutions of, e.g., 1280×720 pixels at 60 frames per second, 1920×1080 interlaced pixels at 60 fields or 30 full frames. These displays are designed for use with digital television delivered at bandwidths of 10 to 20 Mbps. However, one issue confronted by video conferencing system designers is generally the amount of bandwidth available to most users is at T1 or less, which is approximately 1.5 Mbps in the United States, and approximately 2 Mbps or less in Europe. Another issue relates to the amount of computing power necessary to generate encoded high definition signals in a videoconferencing system. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide improved video conferencing systems display and resolution capabilities in environments that support T1 or lower bandwidth capabilities.
Current video conferencing systems vendors have generally believed that network bandwidths of 3 Megabits per second or greater are required for high definition resolution video conferencing systems. Therefore, the major video conferencing systems vendors have not provided high definition capable video conferencing systems.